Year: 2019

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It’s been about 11 years since Marvel began this grand experiment that would change the way that people looked at superhero movies forever – yes, arguably even more so than Christopher Nolan’s DarkKnightTrilogy and probably more so than even Richard Donner’s Superman. Twenty-two films and counting, all standing alone and yet tying into one another (with a few fringe TV shows on the side that are themselves ostensibly part of the same universe) and culminating into two films: last year’s Avengers: Infinity War, which saw Marvel doing the unthinkable and delivering on the promise that Thanos – the big bad teased at the end of the first Avengers film six years prior – would live up to the hype and even see the studio doing the unthinkable by letting the villain actually win, and now this film, Avengers: Endgame, the film that would feature the surviving heroes – conveniently including the ones who started it all – returned to the spotlight and going on a journey to correct what went wrong in what is arguably the most deserved victory lap film any studio has ever deserved. Does this one, with Infinity War setting the bar so high, live up to the standards set by its predecessor?… Well, if it doesn’t, it pretty damn well comes close! Read more…

Based on characters from Marvel Comics

Year: 2018

I’ve seen this movie twice now, and I’m still kinda shocked at how well they pulled this off. Infinity War is pretty much everything that fans could’ve wanted ever since Iron Man first teased The Avengers ten years ago in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first post-credits scene. Thanos, the Mad Titan, has finally arrived in theatres, and I can tell you that, even more than a week since I saw this (twice in the same weekend…), I’m still kind of in shock at just how fantastic Infinity War was. I think it may just be another film I see three times before it releases to Blu-Ray, in fact! Read more…

Music by: Alan Silvestri

Based on the Marvel comics by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby

Year: 2011

Believe it or not, at one time, this was the movie I was most worried about during the first phase of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. The director, Joe Johnston, didn’t have the best track record as a director, and the main star of the movie, Chris Evans, was someone who had already played a superhero in a movie series that was pretty garbage, Fox’s pre-reboot Fantastic Four movies. Rumors of the film also having a random musical number was also cause for concern, and Hugo Weaving was also revealed to be playing yet another intense villain role. Also, this was a film set before all the other films, being set during World War II. Period films were fine, but a period superhero film? C’mon, Marvel! Surely you must be crazy! No way could this live up to Iron Man and Thor, which at least had respected actor and filmmaker Kenneth Branagh at the helm, right!?

Based on the Nintendo video game series created by Shigeru Miyamoto

Year: 1993

You know, there was a lot of controversy in the 1990s, mostly spurred by the 1992 and 1993 release of the first two Mortal Kombat games. Regardless of your feelings on that particular series, however, it did lead to some good: the creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) and the industry wide adoption of its ratings system, which has successfully given parents absolutely no excuse for blaming games for their children acting out… or, at least, that was the idea in theory, but you get the idea. However, perhaps the most disconcerting thing about the early 90s in regards to video games was the sudden proliferation of movie adaptations of video games – bad ones. REALLY bad ones. Double Dragon, Street Fighter, a toned down PG-13 film based on Mortal Kombat and its even worse sequel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation… It’s a trend that has continued to this day throughout the Resident Evil films, the tax write-offs directed by German anti-auteur Uwe Boll, up to today, with the recent Need for Speed garnering a whopping 22% approval on Rotten Tomatoes. Read more…

Music by: Alan Silvestri

Year: 1987”

Apparently inspired by a gag about Rocky Balboa, having bested all his human opponents, fighting an alien contender, Predator always felt, to me, like a cheap and uninteresting action film with next to no characters I fully cared about. Given, I had formed this opinion around the age of 10, when I had first seen the film and at a time when I thought Batman Forever was a great entry in the franchise, so I’m not sure how much weight I’d give that assessment, but it’s one that I held on to for quite some time – in fact, I have basically avoided every possible opportunity to actually see it again in full length from that first viewing onward just based on the fact that it was a boring, super-macho action film with an ugly alien creature. I’ve seen both Alien vs. Predator films more times than this (though that’s more because they’re so entertainingly bad). For Guy Movie Month, however, I decided that it was time that I got past my distaste for the film and give it another go… Read more…

Cinematography by: Seamus McGarvey

Year: 2012

I don’t think I need to tell you that you need to go see this movie. If you’re among the several who contributed to this film’s current $641 million intake globally, you’ve likely already seen this film and are, probably, very likely going to go see this again sometime within the next month, if not within the week. While I’ve eagerly awaited the release of The Dark Knight Rises this past month plus, and while I’m fairly certain that it’s easily, very likely going to be among the best of what the superhero genre has to offer, its importance to the genre is fairly minuscule compared to the importance of what Marvel has done with The Avengers. They’ve taken years of development and the creation of five films starring four drastically different heroes and featuring several others and built it up to this one film. And you know what? They absolutely succeeded in this ambitious project of theirs. Bravo, Marvel, you’ve broken box office records!

But you know what? I could go on and on about how revolutionary the film is for you and possibly leave you with that much more knowledge about the inner politics of rights holders and stubborn studios and we’ll all be all the smarter for having taken a closer look, examined the specifics of Hollywood politics, and all that other crap that’s important to know but, good Lord, is usually boring to learn. And I’m not going to do that. You know why? Because when I went to that theatre two days early to buy tickets as soon as they went on sale at my local Harkins, when I went to the theatre about two hours early, by myself like the nutcase that I am, and waited in line in order to grab the good seats for my friends and myself, and when I sat there, watching the trailers and then the movie and then not one but TWO secret endings to the film, and when I left the theatre afterward having seen the film in its entirety, I could only think of one thing: “HOW AWESOME IS THIS!?” Read more…

Robert Hammond (uncredited), Robert Tygner (performer), and, yes, Jim Carrey as The Ghost of Christmas Future

Easily the ghost most people remember, and also the one where almost nobody seems to deviate from the tradition — not even Scrooged. The cloaked figure known as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come (alternately, of Christmas Future) is often seen as the most dramatic of the spirits, revealing to Scrooge how the future could turn out if he doesn’t change his ways. There are differences in how each movie portrays the spirit, of course, but ultimately, the horrific aspect is the same, and it’s only a matter of how horrific and in what way.

Scrooged, for instance, keeps with the thematics, with the ghost having a heavy, ghoulish cloak with blue streaks and a TV screen for a face that flashes static and images from Frank’s life. Inside his cloak are hellish ghouls, moaning in agony. The visions of the future he shows Frank are abstract and look completely unlike anything else in the film, showing a bleak and sterile future, free from passion and compassion.

The Muppets keep it grim and faithful, but they are sure to make sure that families who show this to their children will not have tears by the end of the film. And, ultimately, that’s okay. It doesn’t break out into song, it doesn’t speak, and it certainly isn’t the most joyful spirit in the world, but we do need a Christmas Carol adaptation that is faithful without being both syrupy sweet and cheaply made. This spirit didn’t make that much of an impact on me as a viewer, but I get that I’m not necessarily the intended audience here.

Of course, it’s remarkably clear that Disney and Zemeckis were aiming for a much older audience with their collaboration on A Christmas Carol, as the ghost maintains his scary nature, multiplied by ten, with only Jim Carrey’s performance to keep things a bit lighter. Not nearly concerned with being grim and more concentrated with being terrifying, this ghost is seemingly the byproduct of merging the Ghost of Christmas Past and the Headless Horseman, with a hint of shrink ray. It seems as though the filmmakers were concerned that they didn’t have a big finale for the talky climax, and so the final spirit, who first appears as a living shadow, gains a red-eyed horse and a chariot of nightmares, shrinking Scrooge and chasing him the horrors of Christmas Yet to Come — and also the horrors of sewers and being the size of a rat. I guess that’s symbolism? Read more…